Walt's Mission
by scullcandy
Summary: Walt is assigned what is supposed to be a 'harmless' mission to retrieve a scroll for Carter. Little does he know that he is being followed and all is not as it seems. Minor Anubis. More chapters to come. Make sure to comment.


W

A

L

T

"You want me to _what_?"

"I need you to go to the Brooklyn Museum and steal a scroll," Carter repeated, as if this were a simple thing, like passing the salt. He had his nose buried in a book, so he wasn't really picking up that I wasn't following him.

" _Why_?"

Carter sighed and closed his book. One of the shabti jumped off of its pedestal and replaced it on the shelf. We were in the library, so the commotion was easily distracting from my conversation with Carter. At one wall, Cleo was typing on her computer, trying to do an inventory of the library. The library statues made a quiet hum around her as they gave and returned books for her to catalogue. Behind me, two massive ram-headed shabti were collecting scrolls from shelves and stuffing them into a familiar bag. They were Sadie's two personal shabti that she had made to resemble some demon headed guard named _Goatman_ **(for context read Puppy Love)**. No one really knew who the G man was, or why Sadie had twin Shabti's of him, but the Shabti's were oddly intelligent and wouldn't listen to anyone but her. Which meant no one could stop them from taking the scrolls-

"NO!" Cleo shrieked, jumping over her desk. "I haven't catalogued them yet!"

Demon Goat #1 unhinged his jaw and Sadie's voice played like a recording.

"Go fetch me the records of healing from Jaz, the documents from the priests of Anuun, the encyclopedia of magical botany, and a Ribena."

I frowned. Her voice sounded raspy, like she was losing her voice. Which couldn't be right, because she was supposed to be resting in London. The statues mouth closed again and it returned to its task, despite Cleo's pannicky attempts to stop him.

"I thought Sadie was in London, you know _resting_."

Carter shrugged as if it was nothing, but his eyes flickered away from me. "Sadie sends her shabti's all over the place no matter where she is. She probably sent them out to get some recreational reading."

"Yeah?" I raised my eyebrow at him. He had guilt written all over his face. "Sadie doesn't read for fun. What's she working on the requires so many healing scrolls?"

Carter rubbed the back of his neck and fixed his eyes on the wall, as if it was the most interesting thing in the world. "I dunno, I don't keep up with what Sadie does all the time-"

"That's a load of crap and you know it."

Carter sighed, "I really don't know, Walt. She hurt her leg and said she was going to the London Nome for healing. They put her on bedrest and she said she was going to work on an idea she had while she was locked up. That's the last I heard of her."

"Why couldn't Jaz heal her?"

"Jaz had more pressing charges."

"You mean me." I folded my arms. "Are you telling me Sadie _left the country_ because she wanted Jaz to focus on me?"

"I'm sure that's not her only reason," Carter mumbled.

"Unbelievable!" I turned on my heels and shouldered past Sadie's shabti, punching one in the arm. Since they were made of stone, I'd probably have bruises later but I didn't care. The shabti continued to ignore Cleo's arguments and stuff scrolls into Sadie's backpack.

"Where are you going?" Carter called after me.

"To give that psychopathy a piece of my mind!"

"Good luck with that," Carter said dryly. "Don't forget, I need that scroll in the morning!"

"Yeah yeah," I grumbled.

"Think of it as a final exam," Carter called, but I cut his words short when I slammed the library doors behind me.

Scrying Sadie proved to be impossible. Somehow she had found a way to block all means of communication, including the magical ones. Whatever she was working on, she didn't want anyone to see or interrupt. For all I knew, she wasn't even in London anymore. I briefly considered trying to talk through our joining _shen_ amulets, but by that point my anger had fizzled.

"What is going on?" I flopped down on my bed. It was beyond odd for Sadie to be so quiet, or to leave so subtly. Usually, if she was going to leave, everyone in the house would know. But this trip, she had just slipped away in the middle of the night. Carter knew what was going on, but he was keeping his mouth zipped.

My head began to throb. Slowly, a creeping pain began to spread down my body.

The potion wore off.

My body began to stiffen. I sat up and groped for the bottle on my bedside, looking for my potion. Black spots swirled, obscuring my eyesight. The more I moved, the darker my vision got. After a few minutes of groping around in the dark, I managed to grasp the cold ceramic. The rim felt like ice on my lips.

Jaz sweetened her potions to try to make them edible, but there was nothing that could be done about the chalkiness. No matter how she tried to make them taste good, they always ended up tasting like a mix between pepto bismol and bile.

I shuddered and tried not to gag. I could feel a cold numbing pushing away the pain. Slowly, the my limbs relaxed and the pain subsided back into the background. I sighed in relief, but it was short lived. Once the pain was gone, it was replaced by a horrible chill. My teeth knocked together and I drew my blankets around me tight and waited for the body wracking shivers to subside.

Lately, the effect of the potions had been wearing off quicker and their side effects were worsening. My curse was picking up speed, especially this past week. My eyesight had been eroding, and the pain was a constant companion. Every now and then my body would seize up. At night, I slept like the dead but I woke up feeling drained. As hard as I tried to hide it from my friends and recruits, Jaz and Carter seemed to inevitably find out. And Sadie…..

Sadie just _knew_. She was tough and abrasive and everyone knew she could be immature...but those blue eyes could cut through me like a knife. She knew more than she said. Sometimes it was concerning, how she was able to _know_ when I was in pain, _know_ when I was hiding something. If she was here now, I would be in the middle of listening to her tell me a ridiculous story about all the adventures she'd done, or the trouble she had gotten into in London, a distraction so I wouldn't notice that she was slipping healing potions into my drinks. The only pain I would be feeling would be from the laughter.

If I was being completely honest, I missed her. Sadie was a force to be reckoned with and having her around was like being in the eye of a tornado. There was always so much commotion surrounding her that I was never short on distractions. Some days I hardly even noticed the pain. Now that she was gone it was hard to notice anything else.

 _Beep beep._

On my bedside table, my phone began to buzz loudly. The harsh light from the screen seemed to sear my eyes, despite the fact that my room wasn't even dark.

" _Don't forget to look up the scroll you need to get, and how you plan to get it. This is your first independent mission"_ -Carter

I groaned. I almost wanted to back out. But with all the complaining that I'd been doing about them babying me, it would be pretty hypocritical of me to say 'no'. Besides, it was just a stupid scroll what could possibly go wrong? It's not like the last time didn't cause a coma, a wreck in the museum, and actually lit the entire city on fire.

Maybe it would be a little less theatrical without the Kanes.

Carter and Sadie tended to arrive by portal or griffin, or turn into birds and fly themselves or something equally as subtle when they went on missions. But I chose to do the more dangerous route of taking a brooklyn subway at night. The people around me generally paid me no mind, aside from a troupe of giggling girls that were seated across from me. One of them, a short redheaded girl with hot pink eyeshadow, handed me her phone number as I left. I incinerated it to ash as soon as I was out of her sight.

Other than the girl with questionable makeup tastes, I was mostly left alone. No monsters jumped out at me. No gods appeared. No mummies popped into existence to try to take my soul-though the homeless woman I passed was remarkably ancient looking. Her glassy eyes followed me all the way up the stairs to the museum.

As museums go, I guess this one was okay. I was more on board with Sadie than I was with Carter when it came to museums. After a few heists, they all start to look the same. Big, glossy, with cheap wards that are easily taken down. It took seconds to get in. As I walked through the marble hallways, I thought about how this heist would be if the Kanes and the recruits were with me. Carter would be telling everyone the history of the museum, when it had opened and who ran it now. Sadie would probably be ignoring him and walking next to me with her eyes a million miles away, her earbuds in. It never ceased to amaze me how she could go from being loud and abrasive and then the second she had her music it was like the world wasn't even there anymore. It was peaceful to be with her then, it felt natural. My throat got tight when I realized that soon these days might be behind me. Listening to Adele with her while we sailed through the night, with Carter and the other recruits creating a hum in the background, that would eventually be just a memory. I wondered what Sadie was doing, and if she was listening to her music right now.

 _Stop it,_ I thought. _If you're distracted, that makes you easy prey._ It was literally the first thing the Kanes had taught me.

I tried to focus more on my surroundings. Since it was after hours, _way_ after hours, the only source of light was from the scarce security lightings. I tried to keep in the pools of light, but it was hard when they only existed every five feet.

The shadows made everything look sinister, including the things familiar to me, like shabti and pendants. They all seemed to glare at me as I passed them. There was a statue of the jackal headed god, Anubis, that was ten feet tall and seemed to tower over the other artifacts. The stone eyes seemed to watch me as I passed. To avoid invoking death-breath I gave his statue a wide arch. Of all the gods, he was the one I least wanted to meet with.

After a few minutes, I began to grow suspicious. It was too quiet, too eerie. The only sound was my footsteps echoing off the high ceilings. Once or twice, I thought I heard a far off crash or thud or growl coming from another end of the museum, but every time I looked behind me there was nothing. Not even a spec of blood or glowing eyes. Once, I thought I saw a glowing white bird fly to the rafters, but it was no more than a blur.

 _You're just freaking yourself out,_ I thought firmly. _That was probably a stupid pigeon_. I was beginning to realize why Sadie always had her earbuds in when she did solo missions.

By the time I found the scroll, I was so on edge that my own footsteps nearly gave me a heart attack.

As scrolls go, it didn't look special. It looked like every other dusty piece of century old parchment. Why Sadie needed it was beyond me. Why Carter sent me after it was even more confusing.

Dusty Scroll #1 was in a glass case displaying Dusty Scrolls 1-5. The one I was after was rolled up and tied with a chord that had been painted to look like a snake. Unease began to creep through me. Guardians of scrolls had a tendency to come alive and try to kill robbers. Judging by the fact that I had broken into a museum at midnight and was armed with many a magical weapon, and was intending to take the scroll without permission, I was pretty sure I fell under that category.

I had brought every charm with me, they hung heavy around my neck, but I wasn't sure any of them would be useful if this snake bracelet came alive and grew 20 feet. I had a sword in the duat, but it felt wrong in my hands. A wooden toy sword would do about as much damage. I was probably better off with my pocket knife, since I knew how to use that.

The image of me jabbing a 20 foot serpent with a 6-inch pocket knife while my charm-animals ran around in a panic was not a comforting thought, but I didn't have much choice. I pulled my wand out of my pocket and began deactivating the protection wards around the case. The wards were fairly simple, so whatever this scroll was, it wasn't very dangerous. The snake around it was concerning though. Maybe, with that thing, they didn't need very many charms.

As the wards fell, I held my breath.

Slowly, as if the thing had been asleep for a thousand years (which it had), the chorded snake writhed and began to become a solid. I flinched, waiting for it to grow 20 feet and try to kill me, but….

"That's _it_?"

Still wrapped around the scroll, this dull brown snake had grown to be maybe a foot long. The only thing 'magical' about this snake was that it had blank white eyes. Other than that, this thing wouldn't even scare my bunny slippers.

"Am I supposed to kill you?" maybe if I could just get it to wriggle off the scroll, then it could slither away and live a happy, non-decapitated life. The snake blinked up at me blankly. I looked around. There were tall marble pillars encircling the area I was at, and around them was a long golden curtain that was coiled around the pillars. Behind the pillars was a door with a half-lit EXIT sign. Maybe I could pick up the little guy and let him out onto the bushes outside.

I reached forward to see if the little guy would slither into my hand. He sniffed my hand curiously.

"C'mon," I wheedled. "I really don't want to have to kill you to get my scroll. How about you just let me put you outside?"

The baby snake slowly uncoiled from around the parchment and slithered towards me, its blank eyes curious. It was almost to my hand, so close-

"NO, WALT!"

And that is when all hell broke loose.

In one corner of the room, the floor began to crack and hot, searing mist poured out. It smelled horrendous. Coming from the cracks, I could just barely see hundreds of little brown, blank eyed baby snakes trying to crawl out of the crevices. Above me, where the voice had come from, a glowing pigeon dived downwards, changing mid air into a familiar figure. I only had a few minutes to register that Sadie had landed in front of me before the real problem slithered into the light.

That gold cutain that had been wrapped around the pillar?

Wasn't a curtain.

In front of me was a 50-foot golden snake, coiled numerously around the marble pillar. Her scales looked like hammered bronze and each one had a knife-like edge. Every one of them was as big as I was. The snakes head itself was the size of a small van.

The great monster began to uncoil. She swung her head around drunkenly, and I saw that her eyes were the same milky white as the baby snake.

Sadie grabbed my hand. It was warm and clammy but I hardly cared. I gripped back tightly.

"Don't move," Sadie breathed, barely perceptible. "She relies on movement."

Even if I had wanted to move, I couldn't. My feet felt frozen to the floor. Behind me, I could hear the frustrated hisses of the writhing baby snakes that were still trying to escape the crevice. At my hand the chord-snake sniffed at my hand, completely unaware that its momma was about to eat me. Or maybe it didn't care.

I stood there for what felt like a century. Next to me, I could feel Sadie's shoulders shaking, her skin just barely brushing against mine. I held still. The mother snake continued to uncoil herself and had begun to slither slowly towards me, as if she was uncertain about where she was going. Her scales made a metallic scraping sound as they slid across the marble floor. Every nerve in my body told me to bolt.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she came to face me.

I swallowed hard. This massive snake's nose was inches from my face. Her hot breath felt like it was melting my face. Sadie flinched, but didn't move an inch. Any minute, this massive thing was going to open her mouth and swallow us whole. I gripped Sadie's hand so hard I'm sure it hurt her, but I couldn't help it.

As if in slow motion, the baby snake in the case began nosing at the scrolls, which were balanced precariously at hip level. Two inches from my body. The sound of them crashing to the floor felt like it was ear splitting.

Time sped up.

The mother snake roared and dove towards me, and I stood there, my feet cemented to the ground.

 **(To Be Continued)**


End file.
